Concert will wind up first-ever Honors Band Clinic at Bethel

NORTH NEWTON, KAN. – The Bethel College Wind Ensemble’s first concert of the spring semester will feature seven outstanding high school players.

That’s the main reason the concert was moved to Feb. 22 (rather than Feb. 23 as listed on some previously printed calendars), at 7 p.m. in Krehbiel Auditorium in Bethel’s Fine Arts Center.

The concert is free and open to the public, with a freewill offering taken to support music study and performance at Bethel.

It will be preceded by a day-long Honors Band Clinic with participants from Newton, Goessel and McPherson high schools.

These students, ranging in age from freshmen to seniors, came on recommendations from their band directors, Greg Bergman, Scott Taylor and Joel Wagoner, respectively.

“The high school students will join us for the Hovhaness and Reed [two of the pieces on the concert program],” said Chris David Westover, Bethel director of instrumental music and Wind Ensemble conductor.

“They already have the music. When they’re on campus, they’ll each get a private lesson with music faculty, have lunch with faculty, practice with the whole ensemble in the afternoon, have some free time and then eat supper with Bethel students.”

The clinic is a new initiative, a way to get high school students on campus for some intensive music education.

As for the evening concert, Westover is calling it “Around the World in 60 Minutes.”

“All the pieces are inspired by folk music from around the world,” he said.

“Daughter of the Stars,” by Warren Benson, is based on the American folk tune “Shenandoah.”

Herbert Owen Reed’s “Aztec Dance” is one movement from La Fiesta Mexicana: A Mexican Folk Song Symphony for Concert Band.

The “big piece” of the concert is Alan Hovhaness’ Symphony No. 23, “Ani.” The composer’s inspiration was the capital of medieval Armenia, Ani, known as “the city of 1,001 cathedrals.”

In addition, Westover hopes to give some kind of nod to Pete Seeger, legendary folk singer and social activist who died Jan. 27 at age 94.

Feb. 22 happens to be the date of what was planned as a tribute concert for Seeger in New York City, where he would have received the first-ever Woody Guthrie Prize. That concert will still go on, now as a memorial to Seeger.

Bethel College is the only private, liberal arts college in Kansas listed in the 2013-14 Forbes.com analysis of top colleges and universities in the United States, and is the highest-ranked Kansas college in the Washington Monthly annual college guide for 2013-14. The four-year liberal arts college is affiliated with Mennonite Church USA. For more information, see www.bethelks.edu.

Back to News Seven outstanding high school musicians will be on campus Saturday, Feb. 22, for a band clinic, which will wrap up with a concert by the Bethel College Wind Ensemble in Krehbiel Auditorium that evening at 7 p.m. …